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September Monthly News

The year might be starting to wind down, but we have been busier than ever and have lots of good news to share in this month’s newsletter.

Graduation celebration of the inaugural cohort of aFETPNG in Port Moresby, PNG, 30 September 2022

HIGHLIGHTS

  • The inaugural cohort of the Advanced Field Epidemiology Training Program in Papua New Guinea (aFETPNG) met for their final workshop over 19 - 29 September, culminating in their graduation on September 30. The fellows were privileged to learn from policy experts at Vital Strategies’ Data Impact Program who integrated their Data2Policy course to equip fellows to develop policy briefs that would transform their intervention project results into policy for action. Congratulations to all the fellows who showed immense commitment to continue their studies over an extended time (due to COVID-19 delays) and have produced work that has impact on their workplaces and communities.

  • Rapid Response Team training initiation was held 26 - 30 September in Madang, PNG. The locally-led training included two FETPNG graduates who worked with RRT Coordinator Emmanuel to facilitate group discussion and workshop sessions. We look forward to hearing about the investigation and response work they will undertake as a team. You can find out more about the FEiA RRT training model here.

  • We loved celebrating field epidemiologists everywhere for the 2022 World Field Epidemiology Day on 7 September! We shared six stories from the field for each of the Day’s sub-themes, so if you missed any of them, you can catch up over here.

UPCOMING

  • The first Frontline FETPNG (fFETPNG) training will be held in West New Britain Province starting 10 October. The team have spent the week of 3 October working together in a Training of Trainers program to equip fFETPNG faculty to facilitate the training, with long-term FETPNG faculty supporting new faculty in developing lesson plans and facilitation skills. With a strong focus on One Health and community engagement, the team is piloting a very unique and ground breaking frontline program. We are very excited to be supporting the launch of this new program and look forward to hearing the stories from the field and assessing the programs impact.

  • The second workshop of the Intermediate FETPNG (iFETPNG) commences on 24 October. This cohort is the 8th since 2013. We are looking forward to hearing the results of the fellows’ field projects, and supporting them to plan public health interventions to address the identified challenges. We are pleased that much of this workshop will be run by Junior Faculty, who are graduates of aFETPNG and iFETPNG! If you missed it, Junior Faculty member Pauline recently shared about her experience of growing from a FETPNG fellow to now becoming a trainer here.

STORIES FROM THE FIELD

aFETPNG participants at workshop 2, March 2022

As the inaugural aFETPNG cohort celebrated their graduation last week, we thought we would share with you a blog written by two aFETPNG fellows following the second workshop in March 2022. In it, Maggie and Israel share about their experience of being fellows in the extended program, and how they have utilised their skills in the field for conducting their intervention projects and during the COVID-19 response.

Advanced Field Epidemiology Training in PNG: Workshop 2

INTERACTIVE LEARNING SESSIONS AT TEPHINET CONFERENCE IN PANAMA

Attendees and FEiA facilitators at the Operationalising FETP Impact Evaluation Interactive Learning Session, TEPHINET Global Scientific Conference, Panama, September 2022

We were pleased to be able to host three Interactive Learning Sessions (ILS) at the 11th TEPHINET Global Scientific Conference in Panama in September. Thank you to all of our colleagues who joined us from around the world to learn together. If you joined us, please stay in touch (all our communication channels listed at the bottom of the newsletter) and if you weren’t able to make it, we would love to connect and share resources with you from each of the sessions. A summary of each of the sessions will be shared in our blog next month.

RESOURCES

Here at FEiA, we love to make the resources that we develop for our programs freely available for use by our field epidemiologist colleagues around the world. We encourage FETPs to please use and adapt any of our materials for your own context. Please let us know if you use any of them - we would appreciate hearing if they were useful, and how we could improve them. We endeavour to continue to add to our collection of resources over time, so please check back in on our Resources tab to see what new tools we have to share each month.

Resources

PHOTO OF THE MONTH

The aFETPNG team were honoured to enjoy a workshop session led by a special guest facilitator!